


To Love a Child

by philaetos



Series: Carry On Countdown 2020 [7]
Category: Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Baz is panicking, Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), Here comes the Daphne obsession again, M/M, Simon and Baz are adopting a child, so he tells Daphne about what scares him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philaetos/pseuds/philaetos
Summary: “Is it hard, loving a child that isn’t yours? Biologically yours, I mean.”—————————As he’s about to become a father, Baz doubt his ability to be a good one, and asks his stepmother for advice while reminiscing his own childhood.Written for the Carry On CountdownDay 9 : Kids/Childhood
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Carry On Countdown 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2030371
Comments: 21
Kudos: 43
Collections: Carry On Countdown 2020





	To Love a Child

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re reading my other fanfics, I just wanted to say that this is something I see happening in Baz and Simon’s future, in my “Studies” series ^^

**Baz**

“Is it hard, loving a child that isn’t yours? Biologically yours, I mean.”

Daphne stops sipping her tea and puts it down. Porcelain hitting porcelain is the only sound between us until she opens her mouth. “Are you anxious about welcoming your daughter home?”

_ My daughter _ . The words still sound foreign. I’m scared they’re always going to sound foreign. That Charlotte will always be  _ Charlotte _ , and not  _ my daughter _ . 

“Yes.” Charlotte is moving in with us tomorrow, of course I’m bloody anxious about it. Please answer my question.”

“Not yet,” Daphne says, reaching out to hold my hand. “Tell me what you’re feeling first. What scares you?”

She sound genuinely concerned. She always does. Her feelings for me have always seemed genuine, for as long as I can remember. She doesn’t have to  _ pretend  _ to care for me. To love me. 

“I’m afraid I won’t be a good parent to her. That I won’t be able to love her like I would love a child of my flesh and blood.”

“Basil, I think that if you worry about not loving her enough, you’re already in the right mindset to be a good parent. Bad parents don’t care about not being good enough for their children.”

I think of the Mage. Of how he abandoned Simon because a baby wasn’t useful enough for him. Of how he used him, and never seemed to care about it, despite Simon being his son.

“But sometimes you can have the right intentions and not be able to act on them the right way,” I answer.

**…**

_ 23 years ago, 6 years old _

_ I knock on the door of Daddy’s room. _

_ Daddy is always in his room, or in his office, but he’s almost never with me downstairs like Aunt Fiona or Vera. Sometimes he has lunch with us. I like that a lot. But it’s not often at all. Most of the time, he’s here. _

_ “Come in, Baz,” I hear him say through the door.  _

_ I press on the door handle and push the door open. Daddy is sitting on the sofa, looking at me as I walk towards him. He’s in his pyjamas. Vera says I can’t wear pyjamas past breakfast, but Daddy wears his all day. It’s unfair. _

_ “I made this for you,” I tell him, giving him my drawing. He takes it, and as he looks at it, I explain. “It’s you and me. We’re playing outside.”  _

_ I point at the flowers and the sun I’ve drawn to show that it’s outside.  _

_ Daddy hasn’t played outside with me since Mummy died. I’d like it a lot if he did but when I ask him he says he doesn’t want to.  _

_ There are a lot of things Daddy hasn’t done since Mummy died. _

_ “It’s beautiful Baz, thank you,” he says, but his voice is strange, like he’s very tired even though it’s just the afternoon. “Please go now. Vera is going to call you if you disappear for too long.” _

_ Daddy never lets me stay in his room. Mummy did. And in her office too. I could stay with Mummy for hours and hours and hours if I wanted. But Daddy doesn’t want to be with me, I think. _

_ I’m a little bit sad about that but I don’t want him to be angry so I climb off the sofa. I hug his leg, putting my head on his knee. Seconds later I let go, and then I’m gone.  _

**...**

When I was 15, as I was looking for something in my father’s room, I found all of the drawings I made for him when I was a kid, kept in a folder.

**…**

“That’s true. But the thing is, acting ‘the right way’, it’s almost impossible with a child. You can’t do  _ the  _ best, as hard as you try, because there isn’t a best way to raise a kid. Every child is different, what works with one won’t necessarily work with another. All you can do is  _ your  _ best and hope that it’ll be enough.”

That’s really not making me any less scared. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Daphne. She isn’t the kind to tell lies to comfort me, I should have known. 

“But what if it isn’t? What if I try and it’s not enough? I don’t want to adopt a child to make her unhappy.”

Simon says that there’s no way Lottie will be less happy with us than she is at the moment in the care homes, and I want to trust him because he knows what it’s like growing up in the system, but the thing is he  _ wasn’t _ adopted. So he can’t know if it’s truly better.

I’m so fucking terrified that one day she’s going to tell me she wishes we never - _ I  _ never, because I’m sure Simon will be a great father- adopted her.

“I understand your worry, adopting Charlotte is probably one of the most life-changing things you’ve went through, it’s normal to be scared. But you love children, you’ve always been great with your sisters and your students seem to adore you. It’s really not likely that you’ll be bad with  _ your  _ child. Children want love, affection and attention, they’re not that difficult.”

“Yeah but that’s my point. What if I can’t love Charlotte the way I should? She’s still a child but she isn’t that young, what if I’m not able to bond with her the way I could have with a child that was biologically mine or with a child we had adopted as a baby.”

Simon and I had chosen an age range when we started looking for adoption. We were ready to take in children as old as 9, but not older. Charlotte is 6 she fits right in that range, but the thing is, even if I’m extremely grateful for Charlotte, deep down I know that I would have liked to have a baby more than someone her age, because I think it would have been easier to create a parent-child bond with an infant.

But when we visited the orphanage, Charlotte fell in love with Simon. There was such immediate complicity between the two of them it felt impossible not trying to adopt her. But this complicity, it’s between  _ Simon _ and Charlotte. Not Charlotte and  _ me.  _

I don’t know if I will manage to get her to love me like she seemed to instantly love Simon. I don’t know if I’ll be able to love her enough for her to know it, to know that not only of her parents loves her.

Because of course I love her already. She’s an amazing child, I couldn’t not love her. But I love children in general, so much so that I made it my  _ job  _ to be with them and teach them things, which makes me fear that I won’t be able to slip out of my usual teacher role and really love her like a  _ father _ . 

**…**

_ 17 years ago, 12 years old _

_ Sometimes I feel like Father doesn’t love me. _

_ I can still remember and feel my mother’s love, even after she’s been dead for so long, but Father... he’s been so distant ever since Mum died. I know it was hard for him losing her, of course, but fuck I was still here and it’s like he didn’t care. It’s like Mum was the only reason we were a family and now that she was gone, we were just two people who happened to live in the same place and have the same last name.  _

_ But now he has a family. _

_ A  _ real _ family. With his perfect fucking wife and his perfect fucking daughter. He loves them.  _

_ He loves  _ Mordelia _.  _

_ It’s obvious. He reads her stories and plays with her and lets her come to his office for hours and kisses her cheeks and lets her braid his hair. _

_ He does with her so many things I wish he’d done with me when I was little. He gives her all that love he forgot to give  _ me. 

_ Why doesn’t he love me like he loves Mordy? _

_ Is it because of Mum’s death?  _

_ It’s possible, it’s after her death that he stopped loving me.  _

_ Is it because I survived that day and she didn’t?  _

_ I’m sure he would have preferred it if it was me who had died. Mum and him could just have had another kid and forgotten about me completely. Just like he did with Daphne. _

**…**

“I’m gonna be honest with you,” Daphne says, rubbing her thumb along my knuckles. It’s a familiar, comforting contact. “It is harder forming a bond with a child who already had a life before you. When you give birth to a baby -or adopt a baby, I suppose- all they ever know is you. You’re a constant in their life. Starting to take care of a child when they’re older, it’s life changing for you but for them as well, and change is difficult to handle. You probably remember that things weren’t great between us from the beginning,” she chuckles.

That’s the least you could say.

**…**

_ 21 years ago, 8 years old _

_ “I want her gone!” _

_ “Basilton, come on,” Dad says, clearly desperate, looking back and forth between me and his new girlfriend.  _ Daphne _. What a stupid name.  _

_ He gets down on his knees, to try to put his hands on my shoulders, but I shove him. _

_ “It’s  _ our _ house she has nothing to do here, I want her  _ gone _!” _

_ Why would he bring someone new here. Why does he need a new girlfriend? He had Mum. Doesn’t he love Mum anymore. _

_ I feel my eyes burn. _

_ “Basil,” Dad’s girlfriend. She sounds like Vera when I’m having a tantrum. It makes me even more angry. Why does she talk to me!  _

_ “I don’t want to talk to you! You’re not my mum!” _

_ “I know…” _

_ “ _ I don’t want to talk to you, _ ” I say again, putting my hands on my ears. _

_ I don’t want to hear them. Either of them.  _

_ I think I’ve started crying. _

_ “Antie Fiona was right, she said you’d replace Mum!” I scream at father before I run to my room _

**…**

I was awful to Daphne for  _ months  _ after she moved in with us. If Charlotte is half as difficult with me as I was with my stepmother…

“But then it got better,” Daphne continues. “And our situation was much different. I was your father’s new girlfriend, not your parent. You had this animosity towards me because you felt like I was taking your mother’s place in your home, family and life. It won’t be the same thing for Charlotte. For her… you’ll just be her father. Your relationship won’t start on a base of hard feelings like ours did. It will probably still take some time to create a bond, but once you’ll get there… there’s no difference, I promise.” 

She stares right at me when she says that and I can  _ feel  _ her love. It still makes me feel all warm inside when Daphne shows me that I’m like a son to her. 

I want to give my daughter that.

I want to be able to look at her, and let her know just how much I love her without even having to say it.

I want to be a good father for her. 


End file.
